On tiptoe, they stretched their bodies to the limit. Just for a look.
And the first glimpse of Tiger Woods for many spectators at this Masters came on the putting green behind the first tee.
There he stood, dressed head-to-toe in black, relentlessly putting one-handed. Time, after time, after time for the guts of half an hour. . . . 20-footers; sometime the ball dropped, mostly it didn’t. But his demeanour never changed, not once. The repetitive drill was his only focus, immune to those stretching for all their worth around the roped-off green.
And as the clock ticked quietly towards 10.42am, a little chill still in the morning Georgia air, Woods and caddie Joe LaCava made a once familiar walk but not taken in tournament play in three years. Twenty yards they walked, to a slightly raised tee box, the crowds raising the volume with each step, and the noise causing Justin Thomas – walking from the colonial-style clubhouse to the putting green – to momentarily glance across before pursuing his own mission.
This was it, the moment of Wood’s return.
In the build-up, Woods had described his recovery from lower spinal fusion surgery as akin to a “miracle.” And, so, we waited, the anticipation levels of the deafening silence as he gripped the club, swung backwards and hit his opening tee shot with the quiet replaced by a gasp as a wickedly pulled three-wood headed like an uncontrolled missile towards the pine trees. It was in the lap of the gods, but he was away, up and running.
That second shot of Woods’ round was from the pine straw, angled towards the green through tree trunks, and it would be the first of a number of such shots. On the 11th, too, his drive was pushed right to the point that he urged it even further right. “Go right!” he pleaded. It listened, to an extent, and found a way through the trees to finish close to the 17th fairway from where he was blocked out. He’d saved par on the first, but his second brush with trees led to a bogey. Up. Down. Left. Right, mainly shots leaking right. Inconsistent; but dogged, determined, although he needed to take some ibuprofen at the turn for some pain.
Woods, though, has not changed any of his physical regime to cope with the course’s undulating terrain. “Nothing really changes, just because it’s hilly out there. I think all the strength training and all the work I’ve done leading up to this point have really helped.”
On the famed Par 3 12th, it wasn’t the sound of ball clipping trees which served as the distress siren for Woods’s tee shot. It was the plop of Bridgestone golf ball hitting the water. And, yet, his expression never changed. Inside whirling, outside calm. He took his medicine, took his penalty drop and watched as his approach over the pond settled on the edge of the green. He rescued a bogey, limited the damage, by holing a 20-footer. Three-over on his round.
His return was far from straightforward, with shots frequently finding trees and spectators but there would be a fightback as Woods moved his way towards the clubhouse, with birdies on the 14th and 16th until time ran out and his bid to get back to parity with the course narrowly evaded him. He signed for a 73, one-over, the same score he recorded on his last tournament out in the final round of 2015. But this was different, a scorecard in his hand after spinal surgery that wasn’t so much a miracle as evidence of a surgeon’s medical excellence.
If there was one blip, it was Woods’s failure to birdie any of the four Par 5s. But, all in all, a solid return; no damage done, and upward trending ahead. “I got myself back in this tournament, and I could have easily let it slip away. And I fought hard to get it back in there, and I’m back in this championship. There’s a lot of holes to be played. It felt great to be back out there again. I only came up here the last couple of years to have food (at the Champion’s dinner),” said Woods, “ adding:
“By the end of the week this will be a pretty packed leaderboard the way the golf course is set up. They have it right where they want it. It’s really hard to run away from it, but it’s also really easy to lose it out there. By the end of the week there will be a bunch of guys with a chance to win this tournament.”
